Dump a Bad Idea

In your article April 29, Moorpark council member Scott Montgomery said he found the protracted debate regarding the ill-conceived idea to establish a huge garbage dump in Weldon Canyon “a disturbing trend.”

What I find disturbing is that Montgomery, chairman of the Ventura County Waste Commission, has endorsed a proposal that would benefit a single out-of-county corporation, at the cost of the health and economic well-being of the entire county.

By virtue of the size of this proposed monstrosity, garbage would have to be imported from throughout Southern California--in part to bail out the failed projects already installed by the same corporation Montgomery supports.

And I have news for Montgomery: The garbage won’t arrive by helicopter. It will travel in thousands of pollution-spewing garbage trucks. It will pass through his district and through most cities in Ventura County. In economic terms, a dump at Weldon Canyon would harm tourism, destroy the incentive for recycling and therefore threaten the tax base. It would make compliance with trash reduction laws virtually impossible, increase cancer rates and threaten water quality--all of it solely for the benefit of this shady group of investors--and, Mr. Montgomery hopes, for the advancement of his political career. But his divisive political opportunism apparently blinds him to such economic nuances.

CHRIS R. WESTPHAL

Ojai

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Don’t go for the dump initiative. Forget the morality of passing the buck because you’re scared and opting for a dangerous facility next to working-class people you might not like. Sure, it’s right up there with cowardice and ethnic cleansing, but that’s not the issue.

The issue is practical--smarts. Interstate Commerce Commission rules won’t allow any private dump to choose its customers. Are you dumb enough to support outside garbage interests and open up Ventura County as a super dump for half the state?

If the garbage industry’s initiative passes, Ventura County will quickly become the dumping ground for Southern California and, soon after, for any county or state that wants to dump beyond its borders. Believe it.

ROBERT SHIMER

Ventura